Editing the video from your DVD

This question gets asked about every 3 posts. If you were to search this forum you would find your answer but no one seems to know how to search the forums here.

First: DVD Video is in MPEG2 format. MPEG2 is a compressed form of video which needs to be encoded and decoded.

iMovie, Premier and Final Cut (pro or other) DO NOT USE MPEG2 FILES. You must convert your MPEG2 to quicktime or whatever video formats are compatible with the sotware that you wish to edit with.

There are a few ways to convert DVD video to quicktime for editing. Note when you rip the video it will be HUGE because it is not compressed. Ripping a full dvd could fill up an entire hard drive! You'd better have a TON of hard drive space.

1. MAC THE RIPPER: Select Title only or title-chaper extraction MODE
Then hit the "D" button for "demux" which will extract the m2v and audio files to your hard drive. You can then use another app to convert them to QT.

2. OSEX This old program is buggy sometimes but will extract from dvd in many ways, including quicktime

3. DVDXDV This cool app will extract from dvd to quicktime and lets you select in and out points. The disc must not be encrypted though.

4. CINEMATIZE I know this program does it, but I haven't used it

5. HANDBRAKE has a few ways of converting

6. FFMPEGX can convert video formats as well

7. I'm sure there are other apps I don't know about that can do this.

Once your video is edited you have to convert BACK to MPEG2. Quicktime PRO will do this as will many other apps. Do some reading and research.

Ok so now you have your edited video back in M2V format. You must "Author" your dvd now to make menus and playability. You can use iDVD, Toast or DVD Studio pro to do this.